The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-10-26
a SIBERIAN TRIP.
Scenery, Pleasant Travel
no Palat'al Steamers and Cheap

ing, Palatal 0IeauIerS anu Nneap
Fares.
From the ST James london Gazette.
lively French wliter-I think it is
n,,n,os mere in that amusing and delightfully."-
;noccurate book of his, From Paris to
,shachan'- compares his sensations on
entering Russia to those of prisoner ush-
sred into an immense prison, over which
wooded as head jailer the gigantic figure of
The car. To me the main sensation was of
a negative description; it was a feeling Of
absence of jubilee. In st. Petersburg and
Moscow. indeed, the painfully familiar
word still haunted one i'll the newspapers
ord in the common talk of men, but beyond
Mini Novgorod the world was in the state
ofiqnorance which characterized that very
,,riTitive church recorded i'll the Acts of the
hno,tles; they knew not so much as
I,retber there be jubilee or not. This
was refreshing; refreshing, also, after the
beot and dust of railway travelling, were the
COOL breezes which blow up the Volga and
the Kama as the steamer passes up and
Jonn these magnificent winding rivers.
Trdeed. a Urip down the Volga or the Kama,
or even the Dnieper, may he confidently
recommended to those weary of the hack
neved Rhine, the well-known Danube or the
off seen Hudson.
!, The scenery, though it cannot be called
Grand, is picturesque throughout The
OCCASIONAL villages and townships with the
oreenroofed churches, with their golden
Somes and crosses, which dominate the
landscape: the immense broad reaches of
water down which brightly painted barges
and huge RATS of wood slowly float; the
endless horizon, with its miles of forest and
marsh. and its long stretches OF cultivation;
all these form picture which is unique i'll
Furope. and which has a strange charm
and fascination of its own. The travelling
also-if you speak Russians in the highest
deprae pleasant. In the course of four or
five DAYS on river people get thrown to-
oether and there is no more genial and
GonsideraUe fellow traveller than the Russian.
OF steamers there is an immense variety
No fewer than 700 ply on the Volga; and
the passenger boats which travel from Mini
TO Astrachan, built on the American system,
are floating palaces of comfort Those
which go only as far as Kazan, and thence
no the Kama to Perm, are not of such ex-
ce1ence: though the cuisiLs is good and
there is really nothing much to complain Of
A captious critic might deplore the
absence of baths. and might consider one
basin. with limited supply of water,
hardly sufficient washing accommodation
for the whole number of tirst-class passen-
gers, but the philosophic traveller may
Console himself by rejecting on the cleans
ing properties OF the Russian bath, which
he will get at the end of his Journey
We were not inconveniently overcrowded.
A siberian mine-owner and his family, a
cultured and sympathetic professor from
.Jaroslav. travelling as special correspondent
of the NOskoUskt IyedomoSti, two or three
students, and a few business men belonging
TO the Ural region constituted the party,
and an unfortunate Frenchman, unable to
speak word of Russian, who, by some
mistake, had become possessed of German
passport constituted with his apprehensions
OF arrest and Siberia, the comic element
which is rarely wanting in mixed shipload
Of passengers.
There are four passenger lines to Perm
from Nijni-the Lubimoif, the kamenskeech
lhe two best, the Kurbatoff, which
also operates on the Siberian rivers, and the
Gregorieff The competition between these
lines has reduced the rates to the lowest posi-
bic figure for the noble science of pooling"
as p1act ced by American railroad men
appears not to have been developed as yet
in Eastern Russia. The third-class traveller
on the Kurbatoff line can get carried a
distance of 900 miles and housed for four
DAYS for the small sum of two rubles, or
about three and sixpence. He has, of
course, to feed himself, but this he would
have to do anywhere else, so the mujik lies
on his back in perfect paradise of idleness,
drinks tea and eats pies till he feels the real
rapture of repletion and repose. | know of
no part of the civilized world where one
can get carried at a cheaper rate. In
rather less than four days after calling at
about twelve stations en- route, Perm is
reached and there the Ural railway to
Ekaterinburg and Trumen begins. The
railway system is thus separated from the
main railway system of Russia, by
distance of about a thousand miles; and 1T
is characteristic of the neglect with which
the Russian government treats its own
valuable possessions while feverishly
coyeting the possessions of other cities, that
this absurd state of things should be allowed
to continue Perm, besides being the
terminus of Siberian trade, is also the seat
OF the largest cannon foundry in Russia,
foundry which turns out about 2OO guns
year: and that an important institution like
this should not be connected by railway
with the rest of the empire, is certainly
remarkable But this is merely one more
proof. if any were needed. of the entirely
artificial character of the Russian advance
in Europe and Asia, while the true line of
national growth lies elsewhere. However,
from Perm there is a railway to the mining
regions of the Ural this is something to be
thankful for, the old road over the range
involving discomfort of an appalling nature.
The Ural range is certainly disappointing.
The average height of the hills is insigniti-
cant, and the scenery hardly finer than the
scenery of Derbyshire. and not to be com
pared with the Western Giants of India.
The line winds in a gradually ascending
course through fir-clad hills and undulating
country, dotted with lakes and traversed
by rivers, scenery suggestive, though on
smaller scale, of that on the line from
Batum to Tffiis. Tchussojslya the seat of
iron industries, Bisser and Nijni-Tagii are
passed; and after crossing the frontier Of
Europe and Asia, frontier marked by a
simple pillar, in about twenty hours the
golden dornes of the Ekaterinburg cathedral
are seen, and the large struggling town,
with its white houses and green roofs, lies
out in panorama before one as the train
slowly glides into the station.